The famous (and a few of the infamous) who died in 2006, as remembered by the leaders and celebrities who knew them

Mickey Spillane
By Elmore Leonard, author of such novels as Hombre, Glitz and Get Shorty

I remember when I, The Jury, Mickey Spillane’s first novel, came out in 1947 I was in college, and had just come out of the service the summer before. Forceful and full of energy (it had to have been, since he wrote it in nine days), the book knocked me out. In 1995, as president of the Mystery Writers of America, I had the privilege of honoring Mickey with the title of Grand Master, despite some members’ objections. Whether you liked him or not, he played a key role in the development of crime fiction: I’m not sure phrases like “Hot damn!” were ever popular before he used them; and shooting a girl in the navel in I, The Jury? That’s as good as it gets.

A guy by the name of Harry Arno, sixty-six, who operartes a sports book in Miami Beach - you place bets with him on football and basketball games - tells about an experience he had in Italy in 1945, during the Second War.

Tarantino is due to start shooting Rum Punch in July. He called me in October 1995 and said: `I’ve been reading it more slowly than I’ve ever read a book and making notes about casting and about music and so on, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to China next month, and as soon as I come back, I’m going to drive by and see you and discuss it with you.’ And that was the last I heard from him until the week before last. He called up and he said: `I’ve been afraid to call you for the last year.’ And I said: `Why? Because you’re chasing a black woman in the lead?’ And he said: `Yeah.’ He’s a film-maker, and he’s going to make his movie, he’s not going to make my book.

He says that to pull off the scam that the character does in the book, only a black woman would be ballsy enough to do it. But he has interesting casting ideas, so I’d go along with anything he wants to do. It’s going to be a seventies exploitation movie revisited and the title has gone from Rum Punch to Jackie Brown. He’s going to shoot it in Los Angeles, in the South Bay area which is just off the airport. He has four of my books, so what he doesn’t direct, he would produce.

Tarantino admits that he was influenced by me, the idea of the crooks talking about something else, something very commonplace, before they get to it. It’s funny then, because when Get Shorty, the movie, was reviewed here, they thought that it owed something to Pulp Fiction.

It’s funny, because he went to see my agent at the time that Reservoir Dogs was just being released, and he wanted to buy Rum Punch because three of the same characters were in another book of mine, The Switch, 19 years earlier, which he had been caught stealing from a bookstore.

When he saw the same characters in Rum Punch, he wanted to do it. He wanted to buy it. But he didn’t have any money. And he was working on Pulp Fiction at the time.

Walter Winchell called it “Three hours and 10 minutes past ‘High Noon.’ “
I sold that story to Dime Western Pulp for $90 in 1953. They were one of the better
payers—- they paid 2¢ a word, and it was 4,500 words. And then Columbia offered
$4,000 for the film rights, which sounded OK to me.
Originally, I heard that Glenn Ford had turned down the role. He thought he was going
to be the good guy, which Van Heflin played, the guy who is taking him to prison. But
when he found out he was the bad guy, he wanted to do it.
I thought, “God, he’s gonna be great.” In the ‘40s and ‘50s, he was kind of a role model,
someone you could enjoy or perhaps even imitate to some extent. I remember when we
were in high school, we used to button our sport coats and single-breasted suits with the
top two buttons because Glenn Ford buttoned his that way in “Gilda.”
The way I imagined it, he would be very confident in that situation. The Van Heflin
character, he has a shotgun on Glenn Ford the whole time, but he thinks he’s gonna get
out of it.

When his gang arrives in town, Van Heflin has to walk Glenn through all these guys to
get him to the station and throw him onto the train. Of course, because Glenn Ford is the
star, he goes right along with it. At the end, on the platform, he grabs Van Heflin and
throws him into the baggage car and jumps in after him because he’s the hero.
Glenn Ford was always right for the part. He was even in another one of mine that was
done in the past 10 years, “The Law of Randado.” That was my second book, but they
changed the title. I don’t know what happened to it.
**contributor: As told to Peter Debruge

None a you big D people wanna ponie up the scratch for this gem? Who can tell me what that riot was like after the Tigers won the ‘84 World Series? Were any a you guys there? I was comfortably south of LA when the Rodney King verdict was read back in ‘92. Long Beach was close enough for this homeboy.

Abstract (Summary)
Leading writers discuss their tips on getting published and stories of their first publications. Some writers were not paid for their first publications and most were published because of their persistence and dedication.

Elmore Leonard

A letter from the fiction editor of Argosy magazine that arrived in August 1951 began: “We should like to pay you $1,000 for first and second North American serial rights to….” The novelette “Trail of the Apache,” appeared in th December issue. I was 25 at the time working for an ad agency. Ten years, five western novels, 30 short stories and two movie sales later, I quit my job.

What I’m doing now is something a bit different, setting a book in Cuba 100 years ago, and the contemporary sound of voice I’ve been using for the past 25 years or so simply doesn’t work. The writing requires a different attitude. That’s the key word in learning how to write and establishing a natural voice: attitude.

Abstract (Summary)
Leading writers were asked to name the most influential writer of the past 75 years. Most writers named Ernest Hemmingway, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Graham Greene, and John Steinbeck.

He [Hemingway] introduced a style of writing—lean prose with emphasis on dialogue to move the story—that beginning writers could imitate in developing their own styles.—Elmore Leonard